Tag: Environment

Politics and World NewsWhite House Waivers May Have Violated Ethics Rules
White House waiver allows all White House aids to communicate with news organizations, even if they involve a “former employer or former client.” Stephen K. Bannon, senior White House strategist, will be able to communicate with editors at Breitbart News.

Tuskegee syphilis study descendants speak about tragedy, seek healing
For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Decades later, descendants continue to gather in memory of their fathers and grandfathers.

When Will Robots Deserve Human Rights?As robotics and AI advance, sophisticated machines or “robots” may match human capacities in intelligence, awareness, and emotions. Should be granted human-equivalent rights, freedoms, and protections?

Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Could Shape Bioethics for GenerationsNeil Gorsuch, nominee for the US Supreme Court, has spent his career weighing matters of life and death. His views on life—that it is sacred and “intrinsically valuable”—are likely to shape court decisions in areas from abortion to assisted suicide for decades to come.

Often when a problem is too big or too scary we throw up our hands and announce that “there is nothing we can do” to solveit. Admittedly, climate change feels like one of those problems. It seems like a quagmire of depressing facts and statistics. It is now scientific fact that the polar ice caps are melting, our oceans are rising and becoming more acidic, and if we do not curb our consumption of fossil fuels, our planet will be rendered unlivable. The plethora of disturbing information on climate change is enough to cause anyone to have a sleepless night or make them wish they had never heard the truth about our warming planet. However, ostriches with their heads buried in the sand do not get much done, and once you know some truth, you cannot un-know it. And so the question at hand is not “is climate change happening?” for that question has been answered in the affirmative (although climate change deniers would like to see this issue removed from our national political discourse). The question right now is “what are we going to do about it, if anything?”

Bill McKibben, environmental scientist and founder of350.org, has spent his career writing about climate change and mobilizing communities as an activist for the cause. The mission of his website reads: “We believe in a safe climate and a better future– a just, prosperous, and equitable worldbuilt with the power of ordinary people.” This statement is in no way frightening beyond the scope of comprehension. In fact, it is probably what most people want out of the future. Unfortunately, the direction we are headed in is not conducive to this safe and equal future. In fact, it is quite the opposite. If we continue with our current rate of fossil fuel burning, we could be left with a planet that is ungovernable, uninhabitable and unrecognizable. This is a terrifying thought, but should climate change activists refrain from telling the truth about our planet’s situation?

At one point during the Carnegie Council’s featured video“Global Ethics Forum: Ethics Matter: A Conversation with Bill McKibben,”McKibben was asked about instilling fear in the general public so much so that the sheer magnitude of the problem may compel them not to act. To this, McKibben replied, “reality is what it is, and we should describe it.” In fact, it could be said that experts on ecology, such as environmentalists like McKibben and climate change scientists, have a duty to make this knowledge available to the public.

Presently, we have seen enough “100-year” storms and floods to be convinced of the boundless power and undeniable truth of climate change. Activists and scientists cannot be charged with attempting to use unwarranted scare tactics. However, if they have been guilty of scaring the public into action in the past, is that such a bad thing?

Today’s society is built and shaped by technology and scientific discovery but, surprisingly, pervading scientific denial lingers. Irrational skepticism and flat-out denial of uncontroversial theories is not just a rebuke of the facts of science and an insult to toiling scientists in their respective fields, but should also be seen as a moral dereliction, capable of great harm if not remedied.

According to recent Gallup polls, two scientific theories in particular – evolution and anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change – struggle to gain widespread national acceptance. In 2014, 42% of Americans said they believe that God created humans in their present form (i.e. evolution never occurred). In the same poll, another 31% said they accept that humans evolved, but under God’s supervision and direction (commonly referred to as intelligent design). Only 19% said they believe the current scientific explanation of the origins of humans—that we evolved like every other organism on earth, through a natural process following biological principles.

Following the Vatican’s release of Pope Francis’s first encyclical on Thursday, Fordham University Assistant Professor of Theology, Science and Ethics Christiana Z. Peppard, Ph.D., has been providing analysis and commentary on the much-awaited papal message on climate change.

One justification for such a tax, he argued, was that it would help to reduce meat-consumption and thereby help to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. As Singer rightly pointed out, a 2006 study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed that livestock are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. More specifically, the study showed that worldwide livestock farming causes about 18% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, while only about 13% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions were caused by all forms of transportion combined (see this BBC news article for more on this).